arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to P. E. L. Rakow.
We investigate the recent conjecture that the chiral phase transition in non-compact lattice QED is driven by monopole condensation. The comparison of analytic and numerical results shows that we have a quantitative understanding of monopoles in both the quenched and dynamical cases. We can rule out monopole condensation.
The existence of the monopole condensation transition reported by Kocic et al. in non-compact, quenched QED is tested. No phase transition is found. This shows that divergence of the `monopole susceptibility' introduced by Hands and Wensley is not a reliable indicator of second order phase transitions. In view of these results I discuss claims that the chiral phase transition seen in QED with fermions is a lattice artefact driven by monopole condensation.